Prologue
As I walked down the halls, I noticed many glares from my year mates. I ignored them, as usual. After a few months at Hogwarts I was used to them. I understood that my dad was the worst person on the face of the earth, which was where the glares from Griffyndor, Hufflepuff, and Ravenclaw came from. I also understood that the fact I had gotten into Slytherin for "free" was what attracted the glares from my dorm mates.
I spent most of that year alone, but towards the end I started noticing the fact that I was being ignored in favor of a pair of red-headed twins. They seemed to be attracting most of the Slytherin's wrath. One day, Pansy Parkinson woke up with a huge nose that resembled a pig. That got the twins detention for a week. Another time, Draco Malfoy came down from the dorm with his hair flashing gold and red. That had just happened to be the day of the final Quiddich game, Griffyndor versus Slytherin. The twins happened to be Beaters for the Griffyndor team. Although no one was ever blamed, I formed my own theory.
Soon, I noticed that as I passed the twins in the halls, they pretended to ignore me but one of them (George, I think- I've always been really good with faces) always nodded almost imperceptibly to me. I smiled just as imperceptibly.
Throughout the second half of the year, the wrath of most students was directed mainly at them. All the Slytherins were pranked at one time or another. Well, all except me. The last day of school, the day we left for the train, I woke up to find a gold rose on my bedside table. It had a note next to it:
"We're watching over you. You're better than all of them. Remember, there aren't such things as guardian angels. Guardian pranksters? Now, that's another thing."
I smiled. Maybe being bribed into Slytherin had been good for me. All the way home, I kept thinking about the twins. They were very interesting. I made a list of their pranks and the punishments received for them. Then, after that, I tried to think of anything particularly nasty that had been done to me that day or the day before. As I wrote notes next to their pranks, my smile began to widen.